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Two US Women Cheated off Money in Phishing Frauds

A woman in Parsippany, New Jersey (USA) was defrauded of almost $15,000 via phishing e-mails that purported to be from the National Bank of Egypt and the Federal Bureau Investigation separately, police said.

The first e-mail message dated January 18, 2009 came to the victim saying that she would get $5 Million. The e-mail further said that to deposit the amount into her account, the Egyptian bank required $20,100 as transfer fees.

Subsequently, the second e-mail message came to the woman that used false FBI address along with a photograph of Robert Mueller, Director of FBI, certifying that the Egyptian prize was "hundred percent genuine", Earl Kinsey, Township Police Officer said, as reported by DailyRecord on January 27, 2009.

The woman wired five money grams amounting to $14,695 through Western Union. But on January 26, 2009, a suspicion developed in her mind that prompted her to inform police. According to Kinsey, the original e-mail looked like a phishing message since it used the usual scam trick of announcing a bogus prize for the recipient.

However, on replying to the e-mail, the woman received messages that directly addressed her. While the FBI e-mails displayed Mueller's picture, they did not have a regular government address. At the same time, there were several spelling and grammatical errors in them.

According to police in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (USA), a Sioux Falls woman, aged 36, became a victim of a Nigerian e-mail fraud. The police spokesman said the woman received e-mail from a person who made a request to donate money so that he could take care of an orphanage in Nigeria. This woman too wired $1,000 to the address provided in the e-mail but in return, got a phony cheque valuing $3,000.

The police said that there is not enough scope for doing anything as the fraud's origin is a foreign country. According to them, scams of this kind in which the fraudsters' aim is to attract the target are extremely lucrative. These scams have been circulating for some time so the best policy is to ignore them.